State residents carry contradictory attitudes toward guns. As voters, they have backed Connecticut lawmakers adopting some of the tightest statewide gun restrictions in the nation.

Mourners at last Thursday's funeral for Benjamin Wheeler, 6, broke into applause at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown when the Rev. Kathleen Adams-Shepherd said the murders had been carried out by an "enraged, sick young man with access to weapons that should never, ever be in a home."

But the state's economy has long depended on the arms industry. And a pro-gun culture flourishes across vast stretches of the state where hunting and fishing remain popular beyond densely populated coastal cities like Bridgeport and inland urban centers such as Hartford and Danbury.

Purchases of guns for personal protection and target practice appear to be on the increase as well, with the state Office of Legislative Research reporting last week that the number of approved gun permits jumped to 16,283 in 2009, from 5,988 in 2006.

"We are known as the land of steady habits," says Walter Woodward, the state historian and a professor at the University of Connecticut. "Our steadiest habit has been our ability to embrace contradictions."

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., reflects Connecticut's complex relationship with firearms. The former state attorney general and U.S. attorney favors banning military-style assault rifles and large-capacity ammunition magazines for civilians at the same time that he works to sustain the state's multimillion-dollar arms manufacturing industry.

Fast-moving rivers, iron ore and canny Yankee ingenuity enabled the state to forge a world-renowned firearms industry that began on the benches of artisans in the 1700s and continues today in state-of-the-art factories.

Early gunsmiths such as Eli Whitney transformed a decentralized industry into an economic powerhouse with water-driven production of interchangeable parts and assembly line output that served as cornerstones of the American industrial revolution.

Samuel Colt's masterful marketing of his revolvers to the Texas Rangers in the 1840s helped put the Hartford-based gunsmith on the map with handguns that helped settle the West -- and countless scores.

"Connecticut entrepreneurs capitalized on the state's water power to perfect an American system of manufacturing," says Woodward, the state historian. "Gun production laid the foundation for a state economy that still depends heavily on defense manufacturing."

Connecticut gained an early edge in 1798 when Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, assembled 10 muskets from 10 piles of interchangeable parts for the secretary of war, to win a lucrative federal firearms contract for up to 15,000 muskets.

Eliphalet Remington Jr., who made his first rifle in Ilion, N.Y., in 1816, later opened a munitions factory in Bridgeport, where inventor John Browning contributed to the success of Remington Arms Co., before the firm began moving operations out of state in the 1970s.

The onset of the Civil War in 1861 offered additional opportunities for Connecticut gun makers credited for helping the Union win the war. Dr. Richard Gatling patented the hand-cranked Gatling gun at the outset of the war, a breathtaking weapon at the time that could fire 200 rounds a minute from the six-barreled gun. The weapon was manufactured at the Colt plant in Hartford.

Oliver Winchester, the New Haven-based gunsmith who engineered the repeating rifle in 1854, mass produced the lever-action weapon after the Civil War that enabled soldiers to seize and hold Indian territory and become known as the "Gun that won the West."

In World War I, Bridgeport became a hub for U.S. Army ordnance, with production running at such a high rate that the operation recruited women with pamphlets declaring that "making munitions is a woman's job," according to a 1920 Army Ordnance history of the Bridgeport Division. The Bridgeport Division also produced cartridges and shells, grenade fuses, firing pins, gun sights and carriages.

By World War II, the talented workforce of 2,500 machinists and other employees at Savage Arms and the Auto-Ordnance Corp., were cranking out 500,000 of the nation's 1.7 million Thompson submachine guns, according to William Menosky, a history buff who generated a paper filed the Bridgeport History Center.

The "Tommy Gun" may have been associated with gangster Al Capone, who orchestrated the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929. But the devastating weapon was widely sold to Allied countries, earning Bridgeport the designation "arsenal of democracy," Menosky said.

Innovations continued in Connecticut, with Alexander Sturm and William Ruger, located in Southport, developing the first auto-loading .22-caliber pistol.

In 1964, Douglas McClennahan founded Charter Arms in Shelton to begin production of the .38-caliber Special, a five-shot revolving lightweight pistol. The handgun became popular with law enforcement, but it was also used in the killing of ex-Beatle John Lennon in 1980.

Connecticut's economic reliance on defense contracts and the gun industry remains strong amid anti-firearms sentiment arising in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown.

Connecticut's gun manufacturing industry directly employs 2,899 workers, earning $224 million a year and producing $967 million in weapons and ammunition, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an organization based in Newtown that represents gun manufacturers.

Nationwide, the organization estimates gun manufacturers employ almost 99,000 workers earning $4 billion a year in wages and producing $13.6 billion in guns and ammunition.

"Our gun industry has made a profoundly important contribution to our security as a country," says Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, vowing to make sure Connecticut gun manufacturers continue to "receive fair treatment from the standpoint of Defense Department contracting."

But Blumenthal adds: "The reason for these strong, serious comprehensive measures to stop gun violence go beyond the interests of a single state or industry. We can take action -- and I hope that gun manufacturers will support it."